Why YSK: When you cook meat, any water on the surface must first evaporate before much browning can occur. You want to get as much of a Maillard reaction as possible in the limited cooking time you have before the meat reaches the correct internal temperature. Removing the moisture first means that the heat of the cooking surface isn’t wasted on evaporation and can instead interact with the meat to form the complex sugars and proteins of the Maillard reaction.
Understood: I will freeze dry all meat before cooking it to remove all moisture.
You only want the surface dry.
Gotcha. I’ll carve off the edges of my steak, freeze dry those, and use meat glue to reattach them to the main, non-dried steak after.
Why don’t you just cover the steak in those silica gel desiccant beads like a normal person? Weirdo.